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15 May 59 Peter Hong Kong Mother 5 Hyde Park Place West ______________________________________________________________________________________________
15 May 1859
Hong Kong
My dear Mother
It is raining cats & dogs. The venetians in the verandah are all shut so that it is pitch dark & I can’t see my writing – so if it should appear rather vague, you will know the reason.
Last mail I didn’t write to you on the principle of tit for tat as I received no letter from you. The last mail which arrived however brought those which I should have received before & altho’ I daresay you think this great negligence on the part of the post office, the real fact is it arises from a habit which I mentioned in my last letter as extremely objectionable – that of addressing letters via Southampton.
In the first place, it looks & is considered rather screwy out here. In the second, if a letter is worth receiving it is worth the postage. In the third place (like the newspapers) one likes to get the latest news & in the fourth you see the delay it occasions. This time letters (& letters which I had most anxiously expected the mail before) arrived just a fortnight later than they would have done if sent by Marseilles.
One of them was dated March 4 when we had dated up to 26th. If you write a letter between mails it is a very easy matter to keep it open in case of anything fresh until the day that the mail for Marseilles leaves.
Then again, the newspapers. I am very much obliged for all the Illustrated & Punches you send but as before explained, they are all old ones you send me & I have seen them long since. But I hope by this time the arrangement I proposed has come into force. I don’t want the Observers, but should like as many of the Times & of as recent date as we can spare.
You mustn’t imagine we are roughing out here. We are the most luxurious community in the world.
What was the appointment Oliver was offered out here. He ought to have come. There is yet a chance for Willie. A young barrister of most unprepossessing appearance came out a few years ago under the auspices of J.M. & Co, was appointed Acting Attorney General & is now acting Judge. Quite young & very simple looking. So that we are without our Counsel now. If Willie could get a letter to this house, his fortune is made. How Teddy ever got away from here I can’t understand. Doctors & Lawyers are sure fortunes. The only thing is to get introductions. Dr Chaldecott our medical attendant who is now at home, was made Acting Colonial Surgeon when the Colonial Surgeon died.
Yeh is dead. His body lies at this moment on board our steamer the ‘Fiery Cross’ in which he has come round from Calcutta. They were obliged to disfigure his coffin & call him marble slabs (he was very heavy) as if the black crew had known there was a dead man on board they would have left the ship. His death has removed a great difficulty & that of Peh-quei has made one. It is curious that the two – the ex-Governor & the Governor both died within a day of one another.
Yeh paid a thousand rupees passage money. A dead man always pays twice as much as a live one, but as Capt. White told the Govt. in Calcutta, Yeh is a dead Mandarin. To give you an idea of how the man is hated, the Chinese here say they don’t want him & the only reason he was sent here was because the Chinese in Calcutta wouldn’t have him in their burial ground. And why do you think he is hated. Not on account of his bad qualities or brutality or anything of that sort, but because he was unsuccessful. Isn’t that true to life. The Chinese think he poisoned himself, but those who were about him say he didn’t.
The other day an attempt was made to carry him off & they got him in a boat & all, but were fast caught. I suppose they wanted to sell him. What a glorious specimen he would make, for Madame Tussaud for instance. His own immediate kin would ransom his body at any amount demanded so that perhaps that was the object in view.
At last I have got a letter from Arthur after 12 mos. who can’t understand why I didn’t write to him. As tho’ I could do so when I have not even heard from him where he is, or what regt. he belongs to. He describes a very pleasant journey he took all alone to join his new regt. & describes himself as being ‘in a dreadful funk’ which I can quite imagine as I know I should be & he is of rather a timid nature, I think.
He describes the place where he is stationed as being considered very lucky for any body to die – even for a Christian. I recollect a weakness he had for pulling out eye lashes because some one said it was lucky. So I have requested him not to go & die at this particular place for a similar reason.
Julius I have not heard from lately, but by the papers I see that Kelly is doing all sorts of wonders in Nepaul but hasn’t caught the Nana yet. Tantia Topee I am glad to see is hanged. It is the best death for these fellows. It is treating them like dogs. The sooner they hang the Rajah of something ending in ‘bad’ too the better, but Mann Sing I suppose must be spared altho’ it seems rather incorrect to spare a man who has committed all the crimes that ever Tantia did & added to them – that of cowardly & treacherously betraying his comrade. But these sort of men must be made use of. I send all my brothers papers whenever I can. I hope they get them tho’ I have never had one acknowledged yet.
Sir John Bowring left here without one single friend or without a single person to say a good word for him except his so-called oracle of the ‘China Mail’ & it is said that he was the writer of the very article speaking his own praises. I believe him to be unscrupulous, selfish, without a grain of feeling, a heart, a soul or a conscience. Such he is represented & generally allowed to be & such I know from experience is his son. His son who is a partner in this house is all this alone. Without a friend. Neither his superiors or inferiors can speak of him or even speak to him with the slightest degree of respect. He is a miserable looking creature at death’s door, but nobody has the slightest pity for him but all say ‘I wish he’d die’.
One of the daughters positively refused to go home as perhaps she saw a vision of her father’s disgrace & has turned sister of charity here, much to the disgust of her brother who is a complete Atheist. I have been reading a book which I didn’t think I shall ever get thro’. It is Pepy’s diary during the time of Charles II. He was Secretary to the Admiralty & saw a great deal of the Court & there is a great deal of information of the times to be picked up from it, the plague & the fire of London included. It has no connection with ‘Mr Pips his diarye’* which also contained a great deal of very interesting information.
The reason I send the China Mail is not because I approve of its tone with regard to Sir J.B. but simply because it is the best news paper. The others are either full of abuse, illiterate, or full of nothing. I will send if I don’t forget it a ‘Daily Press’ with a stinging article – one of the most shocking I have ever read in that paper I think, which is saying a great deal. Nothing can show Sir John’s character better than the fact of his being unable to take notice of such effusions. He once did & the defence was that it was all perfectly true & the jury – all gentlemen in the colony – acquitted the prisoner without hearing his defence. But I think Murrow* the editor, now Sir John has gone, is wrong in carrying the thing on behind his back. Murrow’s name is Yorick. Perhaps Sir John says to himself ‘a fellow of infinite jest’.* His second name is however Jones ‘Oh what a falling off is there’ while Morrow is no doubt chuckling to himself & thinks his articles ‘the feast of reason & the flow of soul’* all which quotations I must declare have occurred quite accidentally & without the slightest premeditation. And now for a time I will leave off altho’ I daresay I shall continue again before the mail leaves.
Give little Helen a Kiss for me. I have no doubt she is growing up a wonderful little child, but don’t hurry her in the paths of knowledge. The young idea learns quite soon enough how to shoot. I have a very peculiar little figure from Japan for her for my Christmas present. It is some thing like a monkey & has an apish way of it putting a very long tongue out of its mouth, as much as to say ‘Don’t you wish you may get it’.
What a very pretty picture that was in Punch when a very pretty little child says to Mamma ‘Mamma dear, don’t they call it Kissmas because everybody kisses everybody’. I thought of Helen & yourself when I saw that.
Your affect. Son
Peter G. Laurie
Don’t forget to send me some table cloths, napkins, lots of writing papers (never mind the crest on them) & some elastic bands – large ones. I have ordered some preserves & tea to be got ready but I think it will be best to wait for the New Year.
* ‘Mr Pips his diarye’ – By Percival Leigh, published 1849
* Murrow – Yorick Jones Murrow (1817-1881)
* ‘a fellow of infinite jest’ – Hamlet V.i.
* ‘the feast of reason & the flow of soul’ – Pope, Imitations of Horace ii, 1